What Google Can Teach Us About Us

Several months ago I was trying to learn more about what the Christian church has taught about war and peace. My research, of course, included several searches using some of my favorite search engines – including Google.

What immediately struck me was the suggestions that popped up when using Google. I took some screenshots and made a note to write this post.

Today I read an interesting post over at search engine land entitled Can Google Tell Us What Men and Women Are REALLY Thinking? and it made me want to dig out those screenshots.

One of my searches started out as “did Jesus teach peace” and as I started to type I found a few interesting suggestions.

Three of these jumped out at me here but two of them are good questions that probably need to be answered because of popular theology. Jesus did not go to hell but many modern Christians believe He did. He also did not reveal the name of the anti-Christ – it’s unfortunate that people have to ask that but I don’t want to get into that today.

The other one – “did Jesus drink wine” – strikes me as out of place. Of all the things people could be asking? Experiment on your own with more letters and you’ll see more of these  - questions that are not important enough to make the “top ten” if you will. Try “did jesus s” to reveal “did jesus smoke” and “did jesus smoke weed.”

My next two searches were even more interesting.

Should Christians work for peace?
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What should Christians think about war?
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Seems that a lot of Christians want to know what they can eat, drink and do on halloween. What Christians listen to and read is also important in my mind, but once again I’m not sure they should rank as high as they do.

I realize it may not be Christians doing most of the searching and this brings up another question – Is this what most people think of when they think of Christians?

Just something to think about.</a>